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AIM Introduces New RFID Standard for Healthcare Industry

New RFID Standard for Healthcare Industry Introduced
Standard Offers Guidance Evaluating the Immunity of Medical
Devices from Exposure to RFID

Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania | October 12, 2016 | AIM, the trusted worldwide industry
association for the automatic identification industry, providing unbiased
information, educational resources and standards to providers and users of
these technologies for nearly half a century, announced today the release today
of Medical
Electrical Equipment & System Electromagnetic Immunity Test for Exposure to
RFID Readers, a new standard that provides specialized guidance on the
testing of non-implantable medical devices to determine if they are immune to
emissions from radio frequency identification (RFID) systems.

The standard provides medical device manufactures and end-users with guidance
on how to evaluate their devices for immunity to emissions from radio frequency
identification (RFID) systems. The test procedures in this document are
based on experimental results from several AIM members. Test protocols
are included for the major commercial implementations of RFID as standardized
by ISO, including LF, HF, and UHF RFID. Both active and passive ISO RFID
standards are covered in this document.

Members
of AIM’s Healthcare Initiative Work Group (HCI) were made aware of a need for a
specialized standard from the interactions identified in the early 2000s
between RFID systems and non-implantable medical devices. An ISO technical report, ISO 20017 (ISO/IEC
TR 20017:2011), was published in 2011 that provided information about
interactions between RFID and implantable medical devices. However, ISO
20017 does not provide any guidance for non-implantable medical devices.
The new standard developed by AIM provides guidance for non-implantable medical
devices and how to test for immunity to emissions from RFID systems.

"Publication
of this standard is an important milestone. A standard methodology to
evaluate medical device immunity to RFID exposure has been a need for some
time,” said Seth Seidman, Research Electrical Engineer, Center for Devices and
Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "This standard is currently under
consideration to be recognized by FDA to help medical device manufacturers
evaluate potential susceptibility to RFID exposure.”

Peter
J. Hawrylak, PhD, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
the University of Tulsa, who led the effort within the Healthcare Initiative
group, shared this upon the standard’s publication. "The process of creating
this standard has been a long, hard and thorough journey over a three year
period that relied on an experienced and dedicated group which consisted of
experts in the fields of medical device testing, RFID system design and
manufacturing, RFID system integration, as well as end-users. Thanks to their efforts, external medical
device manufacturers, end-users and RFID equipment manufacturers will benefit.”

To learn more about Medical
Electrical Equipment & System Electromagnetic Immunity Test for Exposure to
RFID Readers,
or download a copy of
the publication, visit the AIM
Marketplace,
an online resource located on the AIM website.
Insights and interviews with the publication's authors are also available to
interested parties by contacting AIM headquarters via email or phone (+1.724.742.4470).